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Subscribe to RSSTornadoes ripped through four states Wednesday, killing at least two, as a cold front clashed with warm air, producing unusual weather patterns over a large part of the country. The Weather Channel's Julie Martin reports.
Updated at 9 p.m. ET: Severe thunderstorms continued to threaten Wednesday night along a multi-state line stretching from the Southeast to as far north as the nation's capital, according to The Weather Channel.
The National Weather Service issued tornado watches across large swaths of Georgia, as well as parts of Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, the Carolinas and northwest Florida, through Wednesday night. The Weather Channel warned of thunderstorms with spotty, damaging gusts and low chance of tornado in northeastern Florida and on the east side of the Florida panhandle.
Thirteen tornadoes were confirmed to have blown through the South on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to The Weather Channel -- they touched down in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and Illinois on Tuesday and Indiana, Tennessee and Georgia on Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday, a violent tornado that ripped through Adairsville, Ga., killed at least one person, overturned cars, littered Interstate 75 with debris and forced officials to shut down a 10-mile stretch of the road, officials said.
Numerous buildings in nearby Bartow, Ga., some with people inside, were also damaged in the powerful storm, and police have received multiple calls of injuries and trauma, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
A man was killed in the state when the tornado hit his mobile home, Bartow County officials said.
Eight people went to the hospital with injuries following the storm, officials at Gordon Hospital in Calhoun, Ga., said. The storm also left at least 12,400 without power statewide, utilities providers said.
That twister was only one of a handful that touched down in the South and the Midwest Wednesday, as storms throughout the region caused widespread power outages, structural damages and were blamed for another death in the region.
The National Weather Service also confirmed another twister touched down in Sardis, Miss., heavily damaging homes in Solsberry, Ind.
Earlier, a 47-year-old man in Nashville, Tenn., was killed when a tree fell on a shed he was in, according to local fire department officials.
Amateur video taken from inside a Food Lion store captures a tornado as it tears through Adairsville, Georgia. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Meanwhile, in Monticello, Ark., a woman was struck by lightning late Tuesday but only had minor injuries, according to police, and a 32-year-old woman and a 7-year-old boy were treated for minor injuries in Marion County, Ky., the emergency management division reported.
Packing quarter-size hail and powerful winds, the storms also knocked out power to thousands of people throughout the region early Wednesday.
In Memphis, Tenn., more than 13,000 customers lost power as high winds tore down power lines and at least two tornado warnings were issued in the area, but later expired, according to the National Weather Service.
And more than 7,300 Nashville customers were without power, according to Nashville Electric. Utilities reported another 8,000 outages in Arkansas, 7,000 in Mississippi, and nearly 12,000 in Indiana.
In Arlington, Tenn., downed power lines sparked a fast-spreading grass fire that caused the evacuation of a small mental-health facility, Arlington Fire Department Lt. Chad Wiseman said.
"The wind was pushing everything really fast," Wiseman said, adding that gusts reached 50 mph as the fire was burning. "The wind feeds everything. The wind will turn a little grass fire into something that was shooting 15- or 20-foot flames in the air. It looked pretty scary."
The fire was brought under control within an hour, officials said.
A number of factors have helped build the storm system, according to meteorologists. Unseasonably warm, wet air has been pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico by southerly winds, and that is being met by cold air coming in from the Plains via Canada, The Weather Channel’s Chad Burke said, adding that the cold air is being driven eastward by unusually high winds.
"It's not a normal pattern for this time of year," said Burke. "The warm air has changed the dynamic. On the back end of the storm, you have high temperatures in the 50s and 60s in places like Chicago. By tomorrow night, they'll be at 11 (degrees)."
NBC staff writers Vignesh Ramachandran and Isolde Raftery contributed reporting.
The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore joins Brian Williams to discuss the severe weather that has taken a hold of large swaths of the country this week.
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God must be really pissed at the Red States!
i wont think sandy showed he was pretty angery with the blue states.....o, but thats just bad weather when it happens there isnt it
From what I have been reading in these posts the nay-sayers still do not grasp what is happening. Yes, climate change has happened before. Yes, we have had warming spells of a great magnitude in the past. Yes, these are recurring cycles. What they fail to realize is that a cycle that throughout the earths history has taken thousands of years to occur is happening in a 100 to 150 year period and that for the first time in earths history man is taking the carbon compounds out of the earth and putting them back into the atmosphere faster than the planet can remove them and stripping the land of the trees and vegetation that are necessary to remove it. Because these carbon products are no longer being removed fast enough by vegetation and stored in the sediment as compost from dead plant material is broken down back into soil the increased volume of greenhouse gasses are being absorbed by our oceans raising the acidity and destroying our reefs and ocean species.
Less trees and foilage, greater carbon emmissions, more acidic oceans, more marine life destroyed, more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, higher temperatures and more extreme weather events, greater number of extinction level events.
You have no idea of what you are talking about saturnsrim. Your lame attempt to fear monger is pathetic. Quit lying about so called climate change, its not happening.
Rex-1306908
Are you really that ignorant or are you just lacking a good education? You should try going back to school and learning about ocean chemistry and atmospheric dynamics. A lesson in geology, earth science, and the formation of fossil fuels would not hurt you either.
Some of the ignorant cretins posting here demonstrates that small brains can and do operate computers to spew and spread their stupidity worldwide.
isnt that one of the states wanting to seceed?but now they will want help.
When I was a kid.
The winds blew them down!
Then we fixed them back up!
Back to work!
Where is the president and vp biden? Where is the federal response and aid ? I'm sorry, I forget this isn't New York or New Jersey !!
Let's send as much money as congress and the President will allocate and pray for the families that
they might find solace in their Creator in spite of the tornadoes and hurricanes and other assorted
catastrophies!!!
Meanwhile in the Central Valley of California, another beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. "Blue Skies smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see." as Ella Fitzgerald would say.
I only have one thing to say: if the people that are affected by this are too arrogant to ask for help and willingly recieve it, they have NO RIGHT to anybody's sympathies. i dont care how much this makes people mad. That is what the help is there for. To make it easier on you to get through a disaster, not to make you look "weak and unable to provide for your own". if you are going to arrogant and ungrateful, then you have no right to any help whatsoever either, not even from your own townsfolk. Asking for help is not being "weak" it is being human. It also shows people that we are willing to be one of them and not a stand-offish, arrogant, son of a *****, if you catch where im going with this. Dont come crying to the Government when you have nothing when you weren't willing to accept help in the first place.
Amanda Cheyenne Koehn
I agree with you 100%. I would like to add that for those that have a problem about others that ask for aid when they need it Don't come begging for help when it happens to you. You don't deserve it.
Start at the top and read down. What you'll see is the first posters were arrogant pricks who had a mighty high opinion of themselves and said we weren't getting any aid, when no one had even asked for it. If Northerner's generosity is to spew this crap, who needs them. I personally contributed a pretty good sum of money to the Red Cross for use in the 911 disaster. Felt like it was my duty to assist my fellow man. If the Northerners don't want to help us out when we're in need, that's perfectly all right. We'll get by just fine. The affected people are not turning down help - we're just not waiting on the government to provide it.
Heck, the Little Ice Age only ended about 150 years ago, so yes it has been warming a bit.
I have the answer have obama ban all dangerous tornadoes, make it a tornado free zone and then every body would be happy.
I have a question for you all... HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU KNOW that have been attacked by an intruder ???
I would bet none of you know anyone that has !
PARANOIA RUNS DEEP IN AMERICA, THAT'S FOR SURE !
?????
wow you are a fool when somebody uses a gun to thwart a crime unless it is fired and some poor criminal who was abused as child gets shot, the news never even reports it Look up the facts some time on the estimate of how many times a weapon is used to stop a crime. Just having a firearm has stopped me from being a victim on two occasions
Good thing it was just Georgia, and not some civilized country.
How long until the senators from GA, TN, and KY who just voted against the Sandy bill try and get help?
Hypocrisy always comes out. So it wont be long. I bet they will try and stick it in the next omnibus bill or resolution bill. The career hypocrites are too smart to spnsor the bill outright, Im sure.
My, my, my......I wonder whether the Red State Senators and Congresspeople will have to think as hard and as carefully about offsets as they did about Hurricane Sandy requests for help. It always looks different when viewed from your own perspective, right? You can always find a reason why the offsets "don't apply to the disaster that happened in my back yard", right???
The whole GOTP should be shoved out of office along with Harry Reid at the next go-round.
Disgusting!!!
Since I'm currently studying Meteorology, I have a couple of concerns. First, I hope people are okay, and the ones that need help are getting it. Two, how many actually heeding the warnings when they were issued. It annoys me to know end when people constantly assume the storms are being overhyped and completely ignore it. It makes it harder to feel sorry for them. That said, I again, hope everyone gets through this.
@sarahtaylor4---- You are completely right on every word you posted.
do you think GA. will qualify for Federal aid to help the victims recover from the damages? probably not. they are southern people, and did not vote for Obama.
Thomas O. Nass’ Paraphrase and Enhancement of W.C. Lowdermilk , U.S. Dept of Agriculture 1948, from "Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years"
This Holy Earth:
Thou shall inherit this Holy Earth as a Faithful Steward, respecting, protecting and conserving its Environment, its Resources and its Productivity for future generations. Thou shall safeguard its Fields from erosion; its Soils and sub-Surface from Chemical Saturation; its ocean waters, its ground waters and its air from chemical pollution; its Oceans from over fishing; its Forests from desolation; its Mineral Resources from depletion; its Hills from overgrazing by thy herds and its Creatures from extinction. ALL OF THIS SO THAT THY DESCENDANTS MAY ENJOY ITS ABUNDANCE AS ONCE DID THEE.
As all Nations do share in the Ownership of this Holy Earth. Ergo, if any Nation or its leaders should fail in the responsibilities of their Stewardship, then all of thy crop land shall become dry and sterile ground with wasting gullies -all combining to portend a Greater potential for a Famine; thy waters unfit to drink; thy air too thick to breath; the meat of thy herds and thy flocks, as the spawn of thy waters and thy oceans, unfit to eat; AND STORMS AND RISING OCEAN TIDES SHALL DEVASTATE THY LANDSCAPE. If any of the above should come to pass, then thy descendants shall gradually diminish in their number and eventually depart in their entirety from off the face of this Holy Earth.
Why? Because man cannot continue to "Gut" the sub-surface of its Oil, Coal and other mineral resources without expecting the voids that remain to fill back in at some point in time. Nor can he continue to treat this Earth like it’s his own PRIVATE, PROFIT- GENERATING PLAYGROUND, driven by Sociopathic GREED, without expecting the Earth and its Environment to retaliate!
Why? Because insatiable, sociopathic, corporate, GREED and ignorance of their ignorance of all things except their "Bottom Line" shall have decreed it so.
Corporate "PROFITS" and a "Clean Environment" are not, and never will be, compatible. Corporate Credo -to which their sycophants subscribe: "Rather no Planet at all than a Planet where our insatiable, sociopathic GREED cannot be satisfied. Restrictions, Safety Regulations and the Environment be Damned!"
Tom Nass
5th Marine Division - WWII
on average JJ, people listen to the weather and prepare for the liklihood of severe weather. but when a tornado warning, its really here take cover, sieren goes off, you have seconds to get to the storm cellar. not minutes, hours or days, seconds. a lot of those small rural communities can not afford the kind of warning system to tell everyone ITS HERE. so back off, until you experience it for yourself.
Why does everyone cry for Federal aid every time a storm hits? Doesn't anybody carry insurance? My house has been damaged several times by storms. I never received or asked for aid. My insurance paid for it. You want to live in a flood plain, carry flood insurance. You want to live by the ocean, carry insurance. It's what most people do!! Tired of everyone always looking for someone else to pay.
For those of you who question why people built in coastal areas in the first place, it's because that's where the white man's boats landed - in the first place. Those places became populated, became cities of industry, etc., etc. When you look at a map of red & blue states, you could hold it up to a map of the most reputable colleges & universities in the country and guess what you'd find - most of them are in blue states. Besides all that, in modern times, where would all the land-locked rednecks go to vacation if people didn't continue to develop the coast? A devastating storm (or terror attack) hits a city like New York, and it stands to cripple the economy of the nation. It hit's Georgia and we lose a bunch of trailer parks & peach trees. If these storms are "god's will" as many claim Katrina & Sandy were, then clearly, he doesn't care for the rest of you that much either - maybe just a little more, since this storm doesn't really compare to the other two. Aaachooo! God bless.
Average Joe, below average intellect.
Don't even think of federal funds you hypocrites
As usual. Raging red states and especially in rural areas hate federal assistance - until it effects them. Then thier begging hands are out like no other.
Duh
Any Party of the South will ALWAYS BE TRATIORS
Any party of the North will always try to act like they are somehow superior, yet can't even spell Traitor. Can't even call it a typo since it was misspelled more than once by the same witless wonder.
If I were lving in the area that the belt of the storm is coming, I would not stay in a mobile home or any falling subject may fall across my home. If I had a basement, I would be down there with portable radio and phone charger, including my cell phone . . . food and water .. .
Hope that all will be fine by tomorrow morning.